Tangled Ties: Al-Shabaab and Political Volatility in Kenya

In recent years, a spate of attacks has destabilised a swathe of Kenya’s peripheral counties as well as bringing terror to its capital, Nairobi. As violent insecurity spreads, it has fomented fear and stoked ethnic and regional divisions, precipitating security crackdowns and roiling the country’s infamously tumultuous politics. These developments belie sweeping constitutional reforms that have taken place to address and prevent violence in Kenya. Since Kenya stepped up its military involvement in Somalia in 2011, ostensibly to buffer the country from violence wrought by Al-Shabaab – the Somalia-based jihadi organisation – attacks have multiplied, ranging from the September 2013 siege of Nairobi’s Westgate shopping centre, to village massacres, to the targeted killings of police and religious figures. Yet Kenya’s government, while widening its military engagement in Somalia, was at first slow to recognise and respond to the hand of Al-Shabaab in the country’s widening violent insecurity since the start of its Somalia military operations. This study adds to existing analyses of Kenya’s shifting political and security dynamics by examining the role of external influences on its system of violence.UK Department for International Developmen

Failing Young People? Addressing the Supply-side Bias and Individualisation in Youth Employment Programming

International development actors increasingly focus on youth employment as a key development challenge. The recognition of high rates of unemployment, underemployment and job insecurity among young people around the world has led to a plethora of youth employment interventions, as well as often problematic discourses about youth ‘dividends’ and ‘bulges’, which instrumentalise young people and paint them as security threats. This report problematises and critiques some of the currently predominant models for getting young people into work. Examining the current state of play of donor policies, the report critiques the supply-side bias built into the majority of approaches, and aims to advance an understanding of the demand-side and structural constraints. If supply-side approaches are not matched by measures to address these constraints, it argues, interventions risk adversely incorporating young people into the economy. The report also develops a critique of the overall narrow economic and individualistic approach currently adopted, building on the concept of social navigation to understand how young people’s decisions and trajectories regarding work are shaped in reality. Young people are socially embedded: their agency and aspirations are shaped by social values, positions and expectations, as well as by their social relationships and immediate political contexts. Consequently, the report argues that policies need to be de-individualised, both conceptually and practically, to better reflect the real constraints, opportunities and forces that will shape young people’s engagement with work.UK Department for International Developmen

Studies on the epidemiology of Campylobacter jejuni

Over the last few years the bacterial species Campylobacter jejuni has been recognized as an important cause of acute enteritis in man. Investigations in several countries have shown that infections caused by C. jejuni may be as serious as those due to Salmonella spp., both in prevalence and in the severity of symptoms. In the Netherlands, campylobacters and salmonellae are each responsible for about 10 % of all cases of acute enteritis. Campylobacteriosis is mostly a food-borne infection. In the epidemiological studies described here it was found that in the Netherlands poultry and pigs in particular are healthy intestinal carriers of large numbers of C.jejuni. These intestinal organisms readily contaminate the meat during slaughter. As a consequence, f.jejuni was frequently isolated from poultry carcasses and from other poultry end-products at the processing plants. However, pork in butchers' shops appeared to be free from such contamination. It was found that this was due to the inability of campylobacters to survive the drying effect of the chilling process used for pig carcasses in the slaughterhouse. Poultry products are mostly chilled in another manner, without the possibility of drying, so that campylobacters on poultry meat, in contrast to those on pork, in fact reach the consumer

A LADM-based temporal cadastral information system for modelling of easement rights – A case study of Turkey

Type people to land relations are dynamic and, as a consequence, the nature of land title and cadastral data is of a dynamic nature. Land title and cadastral data are core components for a lot of property applications (e.g. taxation, valuation, mortgage). Those applications require up to date, complete and reliable data–including temporal data as in use in application forms and transactions. In this paper, the modelling of Rights, Restrictions and Responsibilities (RRR) is discussed with a focus on the modelling of easement rights in a case study in Turkey. Functional requirements with respect to the characteristics of easement rights are investigated based upon interviews with professional experts in the public and private sector. Then a prototype model was built based on a simple implementation of the Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) RRR classes and by conforming to the national cadastral data management standards related to land registration systems. This new proposed model includes temporal cadastral attributes related to easements. This is materialised in the ‘Administrative Package’ and illustrated in the Turkey LADM country profile. We show that the LADM can be used to describe for the time dimension of cadastral information in Turkey, but that there are semantic differences, similarities and mismatches of classes and attributes between the LADM and the cadastral information system in Turkey. Proposed LADM-based model for the time dimension of cadastral information will be of immense advantage to land administrators, the governments and land users in Turkey

Do heart failure status and psychosocial variables moderate the relationship between leisure time physical activity and mortality risk among patients with a history of myocardial infarction?

Background: Leisure time physical activity (LTPA) is inversely related to mortality risk among patients with a history of myocardial infarction (MI). The aims were to explore if heart failure (HF) status and psychosocial variables moderate the association.Methods: Participants (n = 1169) were from a multi-center prospective cohort study. Information on LTPA (none, irregular,1–150, 151–300 and >300 weekly minutes), depression, social support and other prognostic indicators were collected 10–13 years after index MI. Cox regressions were conducted, adjusting for potential confounders. In case of significant moderation by HF-status or psychosocial variables, stratified analyses were performed.Results: During follow-up (M = 8.4 years), 25.6 % of the sample had died. LTPA was inversely associated with mortality (p for trend < 0.01 in all models). HF did not, but psychosocial variables did, moderate the association. In the LTPA category 1–150 weekly minutes, patients with a high level of depression had a lower mortality risk in comparison to those with a low level (hazard ratios (95 % confidence intervals) were 0.43 (0.25, 0.75) versus 0.69 (0.36, 1.32)), and patients with a low level of social support had a lower mortality risk in comparison to those with a high level (0.40 (0.21, 0.77) versus 0.71 (0.39, 1.27)). In the category >300 min, patients with a high level of social support had a lower mortality risk than those with a low level (0.38 (0.19, 0.79) versus 0.51 (0.30, 0.87)).Conclusions: LTPA was inversely related to mortality risk of post-MI patients. HF did not moderate the relationship; depression and social support partially did

Prognostic value of bcl-2 expression in invasive breast cancer.

Expression of the bcl-2 proto-oncogene was studied immunohistochemically in 251 invasive ductal breast carcinomas (median follow-up time 91 months, range 24-186 months) and the results were correlated with clinicopathological data and prognostic variables. Sixty-three (25%) tumours were scored bcl-2 negative and 188 (75%) tumours were bcl-2 positive. No relationship could be observed between bcl-2 status and tumour grade, pTNM staging or menopausal status. A strong positive relationship was demonstrated between bcl-2 immunoreactivity and oestrogen receptor status (P < 0.001) and progesterone receptor status (P < 0.001). No prognostic value was demonstrated for bcl-2 expression on disease-free survival and overall survival in axillary node-negative breast cancer patients. However, in axillary node-positive breast cancer patients multivariate analysis demonstrated absence of bcl-2 expression to be independently related to shortened disease-free survival (P = 0.003) and shortened overall survival (P < 0.001). Our results suggest a potential important role for bcl-2 expression as a modulator of response to adjuvant therapy in breast cancer